BiblioBios: Gwen Geiger Wolfe supporting transformative work as Science and Engineering Librarian

Gwen Geiger Wolfe is celebrating one year as KU Libraries’ Science and Engineering Librarian, having joined the faculty in April 2022 as part of the Collections Strategy and Development unit. Her role is largely to develop the science collections, but also provide instruction and consultation for faculty and students. Gwen came to KU after serving as an adjunct faculty librarian and health sciences liaison at Metropolitan Community College – Penn Valley. There she served in a variety of roles including reference service, information literacy instruction, collection development, and outreach and engagement.  

Her other roles in libraries include cataloging a 10,000-item children’s school library and serving as the first Information Services and Health librarian at Lawrence Public Library. There she developed initiatives including the Seed Library, the Gym Pass collection, the annual Nutrition Carnival, and a monthly collaboration of local health organizations. She was invited to speak at Kansas library associations and events about her work in developing library collaborations for healthier communities.  

“It was an exciting time to explore what health in libraries could look like, meeting the unique needs of each community,” Geiger Wolfe said. 

Before her work in libraries, Gwen earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Oregon with a major in General Science and minors in Chemistry and English. She then went on to complete her Master of Public Health at Oregon State University. Before graduating she began her public health research career working for the Oregon Center for Applied Science (ORCAS), an SBIR, NIH grant-funded research institute. There she managed multi-year, million-dollar grant projects focused on developing evidence-based, health and safety, web and mobile-app instructional programs. She greatly enjoyed her time at the institute and the variety of work it involved: from formative research to instructional design, web-based content creation to randomized control-trial evaluations, her work allowed her to flex research skills and build new ones. 

She has also spent a great deal of time in teaching and training. She taught courses in information literacy and evidence-based practice, critical thinking, and civic online reasoning at MCC-PV. She also taught community classes in the public library, and served as an instructor at Lane Community College and Oregon State University.  

“Instruction is a natural extension of libraries because we help students learn the how to find, evaluate, use, and communicate effectively about information,” she said. 

KU has brought her a wealth of exciting opportunities and growth. She enjoys leaning back into her love of the sciences and research.  

“It’s amazing to be able to support the transformative work of KU students, faculty, and staff, that will contribute to making our world a better place," she said. “Now more than ever, we need minds focused on the future and the ways that interdisciplinary science can help solve problems. I’m grateful and excited to be a part of that.” 

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